The Last Rhino

As demand for rhino horns increases dramatically Jonah Hull examines the poaching industry from South Africa to Asia.

The winter of 2010 brought the kind of South African weather no visitor expects. It was bitterly cold. People came in their hundreds of thousands anyway, defying the scary crime statistics, resisting the media’s foreboding.

They came for football, or ‘soccer’ as South Africans know it. This was, after all, the World Cup.

I was thrilled to be sent home for the occasion, to join Al Jazeera’s reporting teams in South Africa. I did not particularly mind that our brief was to look for stories of organisational chaos and disaster, half-filled stadiums, mugged and murdered foreign fans. I just hoped none of it would happen.